Magic street

397 pages

English language

Published Nov. 17, 2005 by Del Rey/Ballantine Books.

ISBN:
9780345416896

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

Orson Scott Card has the distinction of having swept both the Hugo and Nebula awards in two consecutive years with his amazing novels Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. For a body of work that ranges from science fiction to nonfiction to plays, Card has been recognized as an author who provides vivid, colorful glimpses between the world we know and worlds we can only imagine.In a peaceful, prosperous African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family--a boy who is at once surrounded by boisterous characters and deeply alone. But while Mack senses that he is different from most, and knows that he has strange powers, he cannot possibly understand how unusual he is until the day he sees, …

6 editions

Review of 'Magic street' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Until this book, I was only familiar with Orson Scott Card through his science fiction, and a couple of articles. This is a modern fantasy set in a well-to-do black neighborhood of LA (Baldwin Hills). Some of the main characters, however, are taken directly from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

It's an interesting attempt at a modern fantasy. It does a pretty good job of blending a modern setting with historical, fantastic characters.

It took me a little while to get into the book. In the beginning, a lot of the dialogue felt artificial. At first, I thought that maybe I simply wasn't familiar enough with young African-American culture in LA. But then I thought that maybe an author who grew up in Mesa, AZ and Orem, UT wasn't familiar enough with young African-American culture in LA. Eventually, I realized that the artificial-sounding dialogue was probably intentional. The characters in …